Jazz and Noir Film Frank A
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IJRDO-Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research ISSN : 2456-2971 Jazz and Noir Film Frank A. Salamone Emeritus Professor of Anthropology Iona College, New Rochelle, NY And Certified Advanced Facilitator, University of Phoenix Abstract Jazz became the music most associated with film noir. The key movie was The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando who personified the noir hero, or anti-hero. He was looking for trouble, any trouble. Great jazz figures were drawn to the noir form, and there was a noir style of music. West Coast trumpeter Shorty Rogers had 4 tunes in Leith Stevens great score. Great jazz stars Bud Shank, Jimmy Giuffre, Shelley Manne and the great Henry Mancini followed. The TV show Peter Gunn soon followed and kept great jazz musicians working. Jazz became the sound of the hard- boiled detective and the noir film. Of course, the writings of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Ernest Hemingway predated the films and TV shows. Since the 1930s, most orchestrations for movies are composed directly for the screen and, as we’ll see, cannot easily exist independent of the movie without much fleshing out. This is in contrast to a film using in its score the hit songs of an era, songs which existed independently, before the movie, and will exist independently after the movie is long gone even though it might be singularly associated with the film henceforth. Think of Roy Orbison’s classic hit, “Pretty Woman,” from the film Pretty Woman (1990). Or all the films with songs by Dean Martin, such as Moonstruck (1987), to establish both time and, often, place, such as Las Vegas or New York’s Little Italy. (Stuart Fischoff “The Evolution of Music in Film and its Psychological Impact on Audiences” p. 2) “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.” ― Sigmund Freud Since the advent of sound in film music has played an important role. Indeed, even before the advent of “talkies”, music played a part in films. Live music played a part, from the lone pianist or organist to a full orchestra. Many jazz musicians played for silent movies. The most famous of these musicians was indisputably Louis Armstrong. However, many other famous and not so famous musicians played for silent movies and these movies helped support thousands of instrumentalists. In fact, movie houses were the largest employers of American musicians. Once the talkies took over from the silent movies, things changed quickly. Volume-1 | Issue-3 | March,2016 | Paper-3 27 IJRDO-Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research ISSN : 2456-2971 Music was incorporated into movies and made for movies. All viewers had the same music with the same movies. Although not the first “talkie” or even the first movie with sound, The Jazz Singer was a milestone movie. As Tim Dirks writes Although it was not the first Vitaphone (sound-on-disk) feature, it was the first feature-length Hollywood "talkie" film in which spoken dialogue was used as part of the dramatic action. It is, however, only part-talkie (25%) with sound-synchronized, vocal musical numbers and accompaniment. [The first "all-talking" (or all-dialogue) feature-length picture was Warner’s experimental entry - the gangster film Lights of New York (1928).] There are only a few scenes, besides the songs, where dialogue is spoken synchronously. A musical score (composed of a potpourri of melodies including sources such as Tchaikovsky, traditional Hebrew music and popular ballads) and musical sound effects accompany the action and title/subtitle cards throughout the entire film. The characters are given individual musical themes,action and title/subtitle cards throughout the entire film. The characters are given individual musical themes (Filmsite Movie Review http://www.filmsite.org/jazz.html). Thus, the success of The Jazz Singer led to a revolution in the movie industry, including the use of music. However, it needs to be clear that The Jazz Singer was not only not more than 25% “talkie” but had not one line of jazz in its music. Jazz would eventually play a part in movie music. The Telegraph(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/11164644/The-best-jazz- films.html?frame=endScreen) listed some fine movies about jazz. The following list gives some idea of the overall use of jazz in the movies Lady Sings the Blues, Blues in the Night, Cabin the Sky, Stormy Weather, The Fabulous Dorseys, Young Man with a Horn, The Glen Miller Story, The Benny Goodman Story, High Society, St. Louis Blues, among others. However, jazz as an integral part of the film score comes into its own with the advent of 1950s film noir and the hard-boiled detective of that period. There is some argument about the first noir film using jazz but a good choice is A Street Car Named Desire. The music is definitely jazz oriented and the orchestra includes Benny Carter among other jazz luminaries. Miles Davis praised Alex North, the composer of the film score. He said, Do you know the best thing I’ve heard in a long time? Alex North’s music for A Streetcar Named Desire. (Capitol LP P.387). That’s a wild record – especially the part Benny Carter plays. (Miles Davis in David Butler Jazz Noir: Listening to Music from Phantom Lady to The Last Seduction, NY:, Praeger, p. 202.) He even compared North’s score to Duke Ellington. High praise indeed. Duke would write a great film noir score later in the decade for Anatomy of a Murder. North’s score, however, set the overall pattern for film noir scores. That is interesting because although obviously familiar with jazz, North was not really a jazz musician. However, he knew how to use jazz devices. As he explains, It is commonly acknowledged that North composed the first functional, dramatic jazz score for a film. Up until then, jazz had been generally used only as source music. “Emotionally it is lowdown basin street blues,” said North in interviews at the time, “sad, glad, mad New Orleans jazz in terms of human beings. And that’s the kind of music that drummed in my head.” He wanted to convey “the internal, rather than external aspects of the film…. The music was related to the characters at all times and not the action. Instead of ‘themes’ for the specific characters, there were mental Volume-1 | Issue-3 | March,2016 | Paper-3 28 IJRDO-Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research ISSN : 2456-2971 statements, so to speak. (The Music of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE Published in Film Score Monthly Online, May 2006 https://wordsofnote.wordpress.com/articles/streetcar-named- desire/) The style is that of 1950s jazz, the Golden Age of Jazz in which all styles could be found and in which people from many different schools could find common ground in spite of the stylistic wars being waged. In other words, no single school of jazz prevailed in every noir film. One could hear bop, swing, Dixieland, New Orleans, or West Coast jazz. However, the similarities in different schools of jazz are greater than the differences. Certain sounds will evoke sensuality, danger, fear, sorrow or joy no matter the school The Fifties and Jazz The LP revolution did a great deal to enhance and preserve Jazz’s popularity. It allowed not only for longer solos in contrast with the limitation of the old 78s, but also for concept albums. In addition, jazz fans tended to be older and a bit more affluent than rock fans, as Playboy had noted. There were many changes in jazz during the 1950s, the Golden Age of Jazz. Thanks to the creation of the jazz festival and its predecessor, the Jazz at the Philharmonic road show, it is possible to note the similarity of the different jazz styles as well as their connection. Moreover, it is possible to appreciate in retrospect the fact that most of the important jazz musicians who had lived were alive and working in the 1950s. Jazz’s past, present, and future were all there in the 1950s. Jazz was still a young art form in the 1950s. The Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded the first jazz record in 1917. Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, the first two outstanding jazz soloists, were still performing. The great swing musicians were well represented. The be-bop revolution had become part of the mainstream and the new revolutionaries who would blossom in the 1960s, like John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, were launching their careers or consolidating them in the 1950s. In sum, all forms of jazz could be found in vital live performances not by revival bands or repertory aggregations but by the originals, many of whom were not out of their fifties, like Louis Armstrong, even though younger musicians might consider them old men. The first of the great festivals was the Newport Jazz Festival. George Wein, a pianist and nightclub owner in the Boston area, decided to promote a jazz festival in Newport, Rhode Island. Jazz still had a slightly unsavory reputation and the wealthy inhabitants of Newport did not have the reputation of being great supporters of the art form, a fact that added to the spice of the movie High Society, the successful remake of The Philadelphia Story. The festival began over the July 4th weekend in 1954 and soon grew to a weeklong event with hundreds of performers. Its excitement can be viewed in a documentary of the 1958 festival entitled Jazz on a Summer’s Day. The film made by Bert Stern, gains from the work of Aram Avakian.